Long time running
The empire of my forebears. The text reads: Specialty: Overcoats and fabrics
Sometime in the second half of the 19th century, a young man by the name of Heinrich Stall, loaded a few spools of tapestry yarn onto a wheelbarrow and set out from Germany, on foot, to The Netherlands. After some lengthy trekking and a good deal of hardship, he arrived in Amsterdam.
There he got married, and ended up running a rather succesful business, buying and selling yarn. Over the years, and a few generations later, it had evolved into what looks like a fairly big clothing enterprise, considering the image above was created at the beginning of the 20th century. I found the image on a postcard when I was emptying my fathers’ house after he passed away a few years ago, and I recently came across it again, so I thought it would be a nice little background story.
Updates, past events, into the future etc
A bespoke shirt in a wonderful cotton/wool mix. A bit warm for this climate, definitely only for winter months
I’m sure many of you will be wondering what happened and why I left my brainchild sitting all by itself without paying attention to it.
The short story: I’ve been busy, very very busy.
The full lowdown:
After moving to Salobrena, I spent a long time getting to know my way around here. Meeting people, setting up shop, integrating. Although Salobreña is a very small town, moving to a different country is always a challenging affair, and as such, it took me quite a while to find my niche.
To summarize, for those people who haven’t read previous posts here: After leaving a monastic life in a small monastery in the french-speaking part of Belgium, I moved back to my native Holland, and started a small company, making very fancy handmade suits. It’s a trade I completely love, and a skill that I acquired during my years as a monk. Fast forward a good year or so.
My girlfriend finishes her studies and joins me in Holland. Fairly soon we decide we want to live someplace sunnier, so we decide to move to Salobreña, in the south of Spain.
And life takes a whole new turn.
You see, it’s not just the sun. There was something in Holland that I felt was missing. Something quiet, peaceful. As I’m sure pretty much anyone who is on the internet knows, life in the modern world is hectic business, especially nowadays. (If you happen to live in the wilderness; you are not reading this. Also, I wish I was there.) Having left a place where I’d lived very peacefully for many years, I needed to have some of that back in my life. And some more sun, please. So it got to be Salobreña, but it could have been anyplace, anywhere.
The revolutionarily new thing that I experienced here was intense and multifaceted. Sure it’s nice to live in a tropical climate. I remember that during the first year or so, and nowadays still do sometimes, I would think: DUDE! I have palmtrees in my street!
Good times.
Ok, if you live in Florida, or in Asia, or anywhere tropical, chances are that you will have seen a palmtree before. But honestly, for a green and youngish ex-monk, abruptly moving to this place was nothing short of miraculous and intense.
You see, I have a theory. Probably nothing new, or indeed correct, but I theorize that the fact that living for many thousands of years in a climate like this, a population will genetically adapt to that very climate. One thing for instance that is a result of good weather, is that it makes people laugh, smile, be generally happier than if it would rain. And the sun just keeps on shining here. So my theory is that as a result, the local people have evolved into groovy cats who enjoy life, take care of eachother, are warm and generally know how to have a good time. Quality of living and all that jazz.
So yeah, I’m happy. Not only do I live in a really nice and quiet small town, just by the sea, it just happens to be in a zone where I have palmtrees in my street. Oh, did I mention that due to the micro-climate in a 10 km radius around Salobreña, this is the only place in Europe where one can grow tropical fruits such as mangos.
The people here are so nice! Everyday I meet people, new faces, friends, acquaintances. And everyone is smiling, and being friendly. It’s all so wonderful, it ought to be in a romantic movie or something. Anyway, to summarize: it was a good choice. And it caused me to forget entirely about my blog. To apologize: I’m sorry that for that time of acclimatizing, I have left my regular readers without word for so long.
Martin, enough about yourself already! What about the suits?
Yeah, about that. Not doing badly, I’m happy to say. The area is not exactly filled with great dressers, but there are, fortunately, enough people who like to wear something special.
I’ve been making more shirts than I used to, and also more ladies’ clothing. Mostly suits, blouses and of course there are always always suits and jackets for men.
Your favourite mad cutter is back
Hello…… Anybody out there….?
Gosh, it feels really weird to be back here. I can’t believe it’s been very nigh on two years since I last updated my blog. Nice to be back though! It feels kind of like coming home after a long long voyage. And that is in fact, exactly what happened, in a way.
During the next few days, I intend to give some background info regarding the farings of Martin Stall Bespoke here in the sunny south. Watch this space.
Visit to London
Next week, thursday 18th of october, I will be in London for appointments. My colleaugue and friend Jonathan Quearney has, very kindly, agreed to let me use his shop to receive customers.
The address is:
7 Windmill Street
Fitzrovia
London W1T 2HY
I will be available all day on thursday 18th, and until 13 pm on friday.
For any enquiries or for making an appointment, please call me on 0034 656 321 321, or write me an email at martinstall@gmail.com.
For updates about my work and my travel plans, please subscribe to my newsletter, or click the RSS button in the menu on the right. Thank you.
Taking care of business: The Netherlands & London
From wednesday 26 of september through saturday the 6th of October, I will be in Holland.
I’ve got some appointments with clients and need to arrange some business matters that have to do with my recent move to Spain.
This means that I will available for appointments during those days. Now, I know that usually travelling tailors make it a custom to receive their clients at a hotel, but for several reasons I cannot do this. First of all, my current schedule requires me to be present at various locations during the week, making receiving customers less practical than visiting them.
But mostly, it’s because I really much prefer to treat my customers with the care and distinction that they deserve. Rather than herding a people into a hotel, fitted into a tight schedule, I believe it is much more pleasant for everyone to be given the time and tranquility that is needed to take proper measurements, select a cloth, and to discuss the suit they want to have. When buying something as personal and individual as bespoke clothing, my view is that the service you receive should be equally personal and individual.
So anyone in The Netherlands or Belgium who is interested in making an appointment, please be advised that I will be more than happy to visit you at your home, office, or other location of your choosing.
After my stay in The Netherlands I will fly out to London, where I will also be seeing customers. The dates for this leg of my trip are as yet not confirmed. I’ll keep you informed when things become definite. You may also subscribe to my newsletter, that way you’ll receive an email as soon as something changes.
For appointments, please write me at martinstall@gmail.com or call me on either my spanish mobile: +34 656 321 321 or my dutch mobile: +31 6111 111 61. (no longer in use)
Thank you.
What is a suit? What is art?
One of the best modes of living, must be that of the artist.
People commission you to do what you do best, and what you like to do most.
And they in turn receive a unique work of art.
As a cutter and tailor, I do treat whatever I make, as a work of art in it’s own right, therefore the title of this blog wasn’t chosen at random.
Suits, to me, are a form of art.
[ BACKGROUND READING: ] Wikipedia article on the Belgian painter René Magritte .
Apologies, spamming scheme got the better of me
Dear all, I’ve you received an invitation from me by email to join quetchup , please forgive me and delete the message immediately. I never intended for anyone to be invited. It appears this service is a scheme to spam people, which is a thing I would never willingly cooperate with. This website pretends to be a friendly social thing, but instead takes advantage of people.
So please don’t hold it against me, I never intended to spam anyone in whatever way. Only subscribers to my newsletter get regular messages from me.
Thanks,
Martin
New prices
A small change of sorts happened, having to with my prices. Please click here for more information. Thank you.
Dinner Jacket
Here is a picture of a lovely dinner jacket I just finished. The cloth is a beautiful black 100% woolen worsted out of my personal collection, and the lapel facing is some of the best 100% natural silk available on the market. It’s such a pleasure to work with such materials! It’s also a challenge though: Especially with silk, the slightest mistake will ruin it forever, and no amount of pressing or steaming will ever get it back to it’s original beauty. It looks in this picture as if the bottom of the lapels are not the same, but that is only because of the light reflecting off of the delicate sheen of the silk.
I quite fell in love with this one, and I was sorry to see it go.
Lapel Fold
How to shorten the foldline of a lapel&why.
I thought it would be nice to explain something about a dinner jacket I am making for a client in Belgium. I know, my business model changed and I’m not intending to travel so much anymore now that I live in Spain, but it is a very kind gentleman who placed the order, and it’s hard for me to say no. So a dinner jacket for mr C. it is. Anyway it is good to go to Belgium and Holland from time to time. For one, my dear mother lives there, and besides, I still have business going on there from time to time. So on with the story:
What you see here, is the front part of the dinner jacket. The canvass has been padded and basted under the front of the cloth. The pink vertical line on the right indicates where the lapel will fold (in the top, near the collar it folds, and rolls as it moves down, to the right.)
Here I am pointing at the beginning and end of the fold, from the gorge, left, to the button point, right.
What we want to achieve with a canvass chestpiece such as I use, is to create a beautiful chest, with just the right amount of fullness. For that purpose, we take out darts (wedges) in some places, and shape the canvass with steam. Another trick is to ease in certain parts of the cloth, such as the lapel fold. For this, I use a piece of linen stay-tape. On the right, you see two pink lines. One is to mark where the tape ends up when it is simply placed along the fold. The second one, to the left of the first, is where I want the tape to end up. See next pic.
Here, I have pulled the stay-tape down, to the right, while holding it steady on the left. So basically the tape will end up being too short. Note how it is now the second pink line which matches the button point of the canvass.
Basting the stay tape in place, while carefully distributing the excess length in the canvass under the tape.
After basting, you can now clearly see that some extra length was created by pulling the tape. Note how the canvass shows ‘waves’ on both sides of the tape.
This excess length is shrunk away with the iron, so that the cloth and the canvass will end up nice and smooth.
This is why we use this trick: to create a beautifully rolling chest for jackets .
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